Small Town Proselyting

We received two e-mails from Elder Goodale today, and in these, he mostly talks about what it's like to do missionary work in such small towns. In the first one, below, he makes reference to a letter that we received from headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, regarding Christopher's military service. Just for the fun of it, I've done some Google searching on each of the small towns he mentions. Most of these links you see below go to a local Chamber of Commerce page or a Wikipedia entry. It looks like Dora has some pretty interesting history and a decent high school basketball team, and... uh... well... Tecumseh has some pretty interesting activities (see link).

Justin keeps hoping for a gun to be pulled on him, and while we might expect that in Christopher's experiences, we're kind of hoping Justin avoids them! :-)

That was a cool letter that the Office of the Seventy sent you. I enjoyed reading that. Did you send Christopher a copy as well? His letter was cool too. It was neat to hear about everything going on over there. It's also really good to hear that he's still been going to church on base. Hopefully he's able to keep that up.

To answer your question, Mom, we don't completely ignore the smaller towns. The city of Seymour is the next biggest town in our area, with 1800 people. It's about 20 miles north, and we spend at least one day a week there, sometimes two. But that's the only other town we really visit. In spite of how huge our area is, the only other "city" is Gainesville. It's 30-40 minutes south, and has about 600 people. We'd like to get down there sometime, but it's tough because we're given so few miles. I know those people down there are important too, but it's almost not worth the miles and the travel time to go see so few people. We'll go down there at least once, though. We may just take a Saturday or something and go knock on every door in town. But that's really the only other town besides Seymour and Ava (which again is only 3000 people). There technically are other townships, but there's nothing there. For instance the other day we were driving to see someone about 10 miles south of town amd we drove through the town of Squires. We saw a sign that said Squires, but there was nothing there! Then we came up over the hill and saw a post office on one side and a volunteer fire department on the other...and that was it. All the other towns (Rome, Tecumseh, McClurg, Brown Branch, Thornfield, Isabella, Theodosia, Dora, among others) are the same way. There is no town. Basically just a sign so you can gauge whether you're really in the middle of nowhere or more out on the edge of nowhere, or somewhere in between. Every once in a while you'll see random little clusters of houses out in the middle of nowhere as you drive (often times it's all the same family that all live together in their own little commune. Yes, that sort of thing happens in this area. Not as much as in Arkansas, but it still happens... it's just more out of the way and tougher to find in Missouri) and every once in a while if we have time we'll stop and knock on all those doors (the more rural the area the better, because I still haven't had someone pull a gun on me yet. That's an experience I think I need to have, and out in the country is where it's most likely to happen...) but we don't do that too often. Basically now we just have to start over and knock on all the doors again. We'll just use a different approach then last time... Amazingly, though, we're still finding more and more people to teach, even though we're having to start over now and tract out the whole town a second time. The Lord has really blessed us. We also set a baptismal date with Angela this week, hopefully it's able to go through. She wants to change, for her and her daughter, and she knows how badly she needs to change, she just enjoys partying too much and has trouble telling her friends no. Hopefully she'll be able to overcome it. Please pray that she'll have an even stronger desire to change.

That's so amazing that you've been having so many baptisms in Boise lately! It sounds like the work there is going so well! It's amazing hearing about the church growth there in Boise and being able to see how well it's doing over here as well, not to mention all the other parts of the world as I read the emails of all the other missionaries. As the prophet Joseph Smith prophesied: "the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done." You can really see that being fulfilled. The truth really is continuing to go forth and filling the whole earth. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have right now to be a small part of that! I love being a part of this great work! I love you all!

Following is the second e-mail we received from him. I love this humble farmer's prayer that he talks about!

Something else that was kind of funny this week was the closing prayer in sacrament meeting yesterday. This older guy (in jeans instead of slacks, which is kind of common out here) went up there to say the prayer and he had the strongest, most redneck Southern accent. (I've found there actually is a difference between a sophisticated southern accent and a redneck southern accent) The only thing I really remember him saying in the prayer was "thank you for this nice weather so us farmers can get all our hay up." At the end of the prayer Elder Davis and I just looked at each other and almost started cracking up. It wasn't a bad thing to be thankful for, actually it was a good prayer, it was just very Missouri. That's the only way I can put it. You just had to be there. We both just wished that we'd been able to record the prayer so we could send it home and let you hear a little taste of this area.

Speaking of the weather, though, it's been amazing! We heard that this was actually the coolest July on record in Southern Missouri. It only broke 90 four days the whole month! That's the lowest it's ever been. We've had no complaints, especially after that miserable June... But summer is finally back though. This week it's starting to warm up again. I think Wednesday the high is supposed to be 98. With lots of humidity, of course. I guess we couldn't expect to get a reprieve for July AND August... hopefully it doesn't get too bad. Hopefully Boise cools down too. From what I've heard, the northwest hasn't had it quite as good as us this summer... Have a great week! Love you!